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DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERNMENT IN A STATE. 269
but each had the whole of it which belonged to the office ;
so that they could easily block each other's proceedings and
obstruct public business. The two lines of kings at Sparta
resembled the consuls in some respects, and the principle of
" collegiality," beginning with the consuls, was extended to
other offices, such as praetors and censors. What its origin
was is not certain. The two consuls, may have represented
the patres majorum and the patres minorum gentium in the
senate, or have stood for the king and the praefect of the city,
it being desirable that one consul should always be at home;
but when the, two annual chief magistrates were once created,
the Romans may have seen in the duality a security against a
tyrant. That, however, does not appear to have been an
original calculation. A new reason for two chief magistrates
was added, after the plebeians gained the right of having one
of them selected from their order. The two Spartan lines of
kings may be explained, without imputing this provision to
any particular foresight, by the fact that two leading families,
neither of them, perhaps, of Dorian extraction, were united
in introducing order into the central body of the Dorian
people. And afterwards, as Curtius remarks, the fact that
two dynasties existed side by side offered the important ad-
vantage of binding two powerful parties and their interests to
the state', and of allowing not only the Achaean population,
but, according to a most probable supposition, the older
^Eolic, to find themselves represented in the supreme guidance
of the state, and represented with equal rights. " Moreover,
not only policy towards the conquered inhabitants led to this
double kingship, but it was a guarantee for preventing, by
means of the mutual jealousy of the two lines, a tyrannical
outstepping of the royal prerogatives.11 (Hist, of Greece, i,,
209-210, Am. ed.) It may be added that the two lines
never agreed well together.* The Carthaginians, also, had
two suffetes, as we have seen. The plan of several concurrent
* Aristotle accounts for the long continuance of the Spartan mon-
archy from the division of the chief power between two persons, and
by the institution of the ephorate. (Pol., v. or viii., 9, § i.)